


Not-actually-a-revelation

by disappointionist



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 21:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7136894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disappointionist/pseuds/disappointionist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan doesn't usually get homesick and maybe this isn't actually homesickness either, but still it aches in a way that feels familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not-actually-a-revelation

Dan has been away for nearly a week when he calls Arin to ask about their future recording schedule. He’s lying with his back on a hotel bed that smells pleasant, the way clean sheets in such rooms do. It’s one of those not-actually-a-scent-smell. His legs are dangling off the edge of the bed and he’ll need to get downstairs to meet Brian in just a little while.

It’s not a bad trip, it really isn’t. But still, what he feels at the sound of Arin shuffling papers around on his desk is something very close to relief. It is as if he was worrying that things weren’t normal while he was gone. So with Arin finally exclaiming that he found the schedule they agreed on, Dan feels relief.

”I really miss you,” he replies to Arin’s list of weekdays. The line goes silent for three seconds.

”I miss you too,” Arin says then. It’s not sarcastic, not overly sweet. Just Arin.

“Thanks,” Dan says, letting out a small sigh. “For the dates, that is. It really helps.”

“You’re welcome, man.”

Dan can hear Arin smile into the words and wonders when he learned what that sounds like. He knows this is where they say goodbye, but he only manages a “So I guess,” that becomes muddled by Arin’s voice.

“Come home,” Arin says. Or at least that’s what Dan thinks he says. They’re talking at the same time, so he’s not actually sure. Dan stays quiet for a heartbeat and turns to his side.

“Come home to me,” Arin says, this time clear as day.

Dan wonders if it felt as good to say as it does to hear it, as it did to say he missed Arin in the first place. He thinks it might have.

“Yeah,” he breathes, way softer than intended. “Just a couple more days.

 

* * *

 

 

His bag is on the floor of his bedroom and Dan has gone as far as sitting down on the couch before realizing that it’s all wrong. Unexpectedly wrong. He’s tired from the flight, not in the exhausted way, but in the way you become when you’re still too riled up from going through all the travel routines. It’s not the expected relief, that’s what he’s missing here.

Picking up his phone, something clicks.

‘What are you up to?’

The answer is nearly instantaneous and Dan thinks he must have caught Arin while he was holding his phone.

‘Chilling at home, why?’

 

Dan doesn’t reply. Instead, he gets to his feet quicker than he had sat down in the first place. He’s out of the apartment and opening Arin’s front door with the spare key twenty minutes later.

“Arin?” he calls out, overwhelmed by the sensation of being at once filled and having been knocked out of his course.

Arin shows up, head peeking through the doorway to the living room.

“Dan!” he’s surprised, very much so.

Dan doesn’t even begin to know the words to explaining anything beyond the fact which is already obvious. He is here now. So instead he walks straight up to Arin and pulls the other man into an embrace.

“Oh,” Arin huffs and wraps his arms around Dan in return. “Hi,” he says, and Dan knows he’s smiling without even looking.

Dan is smiling too, head turned into the familiarity of newly washed hair, spice and that myriad of not-actually-scents that make up the very real scent of Arin.

“Hello,” Dan replies into Arin’s t-shirt. He can feel the other man’s breathing against his forehead. For a moment that’s all that surrounds him, their breathing.

And then Arin says, very quietly but they are standing so close that it’s unmistakable to Dan. “You came home to me.”

There’s a hint of laughter in Arin’s breathing, and Dan expects it to erupt. It’s a silly notion, the pure instinct that brought Dan here after all. For what it’s worth, it would be more than alright to laugh about. But Arin doesn’t laugh. Instead he tightens his grip, wrapping a hand around the left side of Dan’s waist.

“Arin,” Dan says. Though he doesn’t know what he means by it until he tilts his head to meet Arin’s eyes and ends up kissing him. Their lips don’t crash together, they don’t collide. There’s nothing dramatic at all in this soft grasping of mouth against mouth.

Dan thinks that this is the moment where he should start panicking, because this is Arin who not only is Arin, but also Dan’s best friend, his best co-worker and also a guy. But it doesn’t happen. The cold terror doesn’t tighten his chest or throat or the world around him.

The only thing he feels is warmth and Arin tastes of strawberries.

 

It takes a few additional seconds for Arin to pull away with a soft gasp.

“Shit,” he says, although it’s half breath and half word.

And only then does Dan realize that he might have fucked everything up. Only with the rumbling string of whispered curses Arin is muttering in the background does he realize that it might not have been as easy as it felt. You don’t just waltz in to your married best friend’s house and kiss him one Sunday and expect everything to keep falling into place after that. The thought hits Dan like a punch to the gut, but Arin’s hands are still on him, holding him upright.

“I’m sorry. Arin, I don’t… I don’t know why I…” Dan is sure that he would be trembling if he hadn’t locked his hands together so tightly behind Arin’s neck.

“Dan,” Arin interrupts him. “Are you doing this for me?” he asks, which is one of the most singularly confusing things Dan has ever heard.

“What are you..?” Dan interrupts himself. He needs to start over, the questions are muddling it up for him further. “Arin. I kissed you,” he says, realizing that it’s just a statement of fact.

“I know, I was there,” Arin replies so quickly it must be automatic. Their comedic jargon bouncing between them even when it’s not the time nor place.

“…because I wanted to,” Dan adds, letting out a relieved sigh at finally finding the right words.

 

Arin stares at him, and lets go of his waist. Along with it, Dan lets his hands fall to the side. This leaves them just standing, close as if embracing but with a much greater distance between them.

“Dan,” Arin says, and Dan shakes his head. “Danny. Daniel.”

“Is this just going to be a long string of variations to my name?” Dan asks quietly, and he tries a smile at that. It feels a little odd, but not entirely out of place.

“No,” Arin tells him, but falters. “Yes. Maybe… I don’t know.”

Dan tries to meet Arin’s gaze, but it’s too searching. As if his best friend is trying to figure something out by putting Dan under extreme scrutiny. Right now, his heart still leaping irregularly from the kiss, Dan doesn’t want to be scrutinized at all.

“I should probably…” he has no idea how sentence should end, but he turns his head toward the front door. Hoping that somehow, the words will find him instead.

“Can we maybe start over?” Arin asks.

Dan blinks, then turns back to the other man. “How far back, exactly?” For a moment Dan thinks Arin is going to suggest 'before all this’. He feels like he might start trembling again, so he chases the thought away.

“Like,” Arin looks down at the floor. There’s a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Pretend you just came in through the door?” he suggests, and his fingers find Dan’s wrist and wrap around it. “Indulge,” he squeezes Dan’s wrist, and then he lets go again, taking a step back into the doorway.

 

Dan takes two steps back while frowning. He thinks he should go, but Arin doesn’t seem to want him to, and neither is Arin yelling at him or doing any other thing to indicate that running away might be the best option. So he takes another step back. And even though he fails to deliver Arin’s name with the same stride and excitement he had arrived with, his insides still flutter when Arin looks around the corner for the second time that day.

“Dan!” he exclaims. It has all the warmth from earlier and Dan thinks that they might be okay. He takes one step toward Arin and starts thinking about where he will have to change this course of events. But then he’s in Arin’s arms because Arin has covered the rest of the distance across the hallway while Dan was still only thinking about it.

“Oh, hi,” Dan says in muffled surprise, ignoring his thunderstorm of a heart.

“Hi,” Arin says, his voice low and warm and welcoming. His thumb and index finger nudges Dan’s chin up, and their eyes meet. “You came home to me,” he says. It’s heavier now, maybe because it’s the third time and those are always the charm it seems.

Dan bites his lower lip and tries to think of something coherent to say that isn’t actually a long string of variations of Arin’s name. And then he can no longer bite his lip or say anything at all, because Arin is kissing him.

It’s everything the first kiss was, while at once being everything it was not. There’s a storm inside of Dan and he lets it out in gasps against Arin’s lips. It’s rolling around in his stomach and tumbling through his veins in whirlwinds. He breathes out electrically charged gusts of air and takes all of Arin in. It’s not just lips, it’s Arin’s hands in his hair and Dan’s arms tightly around the back of Arin’s neck. Their mouths so close together that there’s no room for pauses, it’s tongues and some gentle and deliberate teeth. Dan catches himself thinking 'I had no idea Arin was such a good kisser’ and nearly laughs, his nose rubbing against the side of Arin’s. When he open’s his eyes, Arin’s own are right there to meet him. The eye contact up close breaks the kiss, but neither of them moves away.

“I missed you,” Dan says, and with a soft sigh he lets his forehead rest against Arin’s.

“I know,” Arin replies.

**Author's Note:**

> My grumps tumblr is damnavidans and sometimes I post fic there and it will possibly be long before I remember to put it up here.


End file.
